LeseSpan

Lesespan is a cognitive measure used in psycholinguistics to assess working memory capacity in language processing. It is a form of complex span task that combines short-term memory for items with online processing of sentences or texts, capturing how memory load interacts with comprehension. The concept derives from reading-span tasks that link memory maintenance to language processing demands.

In a typical lesespan task, participants read a sequence of sentences or short passages while holding a set of items in memory, such as the final words of each sentence or a separate word list. After a block of material, they are asked to recall the items in the correct order. The difficulty usually increases by extending the number of items or sentences, and the resulting score reflects how many items are accurately recalled.

Lesespan is used to predict and understand reading comprehension performance, particularly when processing syntactically complex structures, discourse integration, or second-language input. It has been employed to study aging effects, language disorders, and educational outcomes, helping researchers examine how memory constraints influence real-time language understanding.

Limitations of lesespan include methodological variability across studies, with differences in task design and scoring reducing cross-study comparability. Critics note that lesespan performance can be influenced by vocabulary knowledge, processing speed, and strategic approaches, not solely working memory capacity. Cross-language research requires careful consideration of linguistic differences that affect processing demands and memory load.

See also: Working memory, Reading comprehension, Complex span tasks, Daneman and Carpenter’s reading span.